Introduction

Shogun: Total War recently arrived on Steam, updated to fix issues with running it on modern systems. I purchased it. I had to.

The Total War series of games have a reputation in the strategy gaming space for their bombastic, larger-than-life, but simultaneously grounded depiction of history. Mechanically, they mix sweeping turn-based strategy campaigning with real-time tactical battles between huge armies in a way which is rarely seen elsewhere, despite its great financial and critical success. Shogun was the first Total War. It's simplistic in comparison and might even seem crude next to its sequels, but to my mind it feels like a game with nothing missing, nothing much that could be improved upon beyond its badly-aged user-interface, and nothing to apologise for. A rare pure game. A rare complete game. It's confident, bold, and every Total War game since has lived in its long, dark ō-yoroi-clad shadow.

I don't really remember what age I was when I bought the Sold Out version of Shogun for a tenner from the GAME on Frederick Street in Edinburgh. Perhaps 8 or 9. (The shop isn't there anymore, but there's another just around the corner. Brick-and-mortar retail is rubbish for PC games these days anyway.) I played the shit out of it. My brother played the shit out of it. I sat over his shoulder and watched him play the shit out of it. Vice versa. It was a Good Time. It made a pretty deep impression in my mind, painting a land where honourable samurai fought in pitched battles, where ninja assassinated leaders while shinobi spied and tried to track them down. A beautiful land beset by brutal conflict. A real place and time, brought to life and made interactive. This game alone is probably a big part of why I started wanting to make games when I grew up, one of my formative games, I guess.

Point is, the second paragraph might just be nostalgia speaking. Then again, it might not be. Everything I said might actually be true. Finding out the reality is what this campaign diary is all about.

The Age of the Country at War

Shogun takes place in the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States period of feudal Japanese history: a rough century-and-a-half of social upheaval and unending conflict beginning in the mid-1400s and ending around 1600AD. It's a time period which has become the backdrop for countless books, plays and films.

The game doesn't aim to be historically authentic. Instead, it takes the flavour of the history, the images it conjures in mind and feelings it generates, and pours them into the mould of a game. Stories are simplified or exploded. Ideas are picked up and run with as long as they create interesting gameplay and then, delicately, put back down. The impossibly complex graph of different factions, clans, families and individuals who vied for power and survival is boiled down to 7 playable clans which the player can take control of, who divide up the map of Japan into clear colours, leaving any remaining territory to unplayable grey-coloured rebels, ronin or Ikko-ikki. The player aims to lead their clan to power and become Shogun, the supreme military leader of Japan, by crushing their enemies underfoot and claiming control over all or most of the country.

I choose the Shimazu, who control provinces in Japan's southern island of Kyushu. Having only three neighbours and being mostly surrounded in water, their starting position is enviably defensible. They also get slightly cheaper swordsmen, and their capital province, Satsuma, has a little perk where swordsmen trained there are a bit better than those trained elsewhere, or at least begin their careers with a little bit more experience. I like swords, and although we won't get to deploy any katana wielders during the early campaign, I like to invest in the future. Also, they sport a rather striking green.

(And yes, that samurai on the left is holding an arquebus. Late-game tech in this game includes an array of gunpowder weaponry, and it's great because it's terrible.)

I control the south of Kyushu.

The Imagawa clan, an unremarkable turquoise people, control the northern territories. Needless to say, they're my first target.

Growing Pains

I begin my campaign by trying to improve the provinces I already have while I build up more of an army. I construct watch towers in my border provinces; these act as spies into neighbouring provinces, letting me see the make up of enemy armies, and help to prevent enemy subterfuge within the province in which they're built. I also begin improving farmland, because I'll need the tax money that better farmland generates, because I'm already breaking the bank.

To make me feel even worse about my liberal spending, the game pops up a message to tell me that the Hojo clan are the most rich. Smug bastards.

So rich that they can afford giant tubs of some kind of... dessert?

Invasion of Chikuga

In the winter of 1531 I figure I'm as ready as I'm going to be to begin a war with the Imagawa and move forces into the province of Chikuga. My daimyo (clan leader) commands an army attacking from the south, while another army invades from the east. They meet and prepare to cross the river.

And so we enter Shogun's battle mode. The Imagawa arrays itself on the other side of the river, and waits. My troops will have to cross the bridge under a hail of arrows, before charging into a wall of spears.

My own army is larger, which is good, because the only way I can hope to win is by the sheer volume of melee troops I charge across the bridge. Mine is a mixed force of bow samurai and wielders of yari (a long weapon analogous to a spear), who come in the form of well-trained samurai and troops recruited from the peasantry known as ashigaru. The samurai warriors have good morale and are better combatants than the ashigaru, but are more expensive to train and upkeep. My daimyo rides on horseback, guarded by a retinue of hard-as-nails samurai. It's too risky for him to be in the thick of the fighting, but it's useful having cavalry on the field to harass and run down enemies, even if there are only 11 of them.

After some failed attempts at skirmishing across the bridge with my archers, I simply gather up all my spearmen and rush the bridge in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy.

It works.

I lose a lot of my spearmen in the assault, but Chikuga is mine.

The Defense of Buzen

The Imagawa clan retaliate and strike where I'm weakest: the northern province of Buzen. I have a small force of only 120 yari samurai, but versus about 240 bow samurai I reckon I can keep a hold of the territory.

It's a misty spring day. The valley is quiet and calm. I position my spearmen on a wooded hilltop where they will be protected from ranged attacks, and wait.

In the distance, the Imagawa forces emerge from the mist...

... but when they come within range of my spearmen, there's not much the archers can really do. They unload into the forest, firing volley after volley of arrows up the slope, but my soldiers are spread out loosely and protected by the trees. An unlucky few die, but otherwise the Imagawa arrows barely make a scratch.

Out of ammo and out of options, one of the formations of archers charges the hilltop. It's a mistake.

My soldiers drive them from the forest, but not without losses. Had the second unit of archers joined them in the assault, my men would almost certainly have been overwhelmed. Instead they hang back, using up the last of the arrows, and then press uphill themselves. My spearmen charge down from between the trees. Trying to fight up a slope, in melee combat with far superior melee combatants, the remaining Imagawa archers are slaughtered just like the others and routed from the field.

With the enemy on their back foot, I sink in the knife and march my forces into the second province on my list: Chikuzen. The small handful of battered Imagawa troops stationed there don't even attempt to defend it, and retreat.

Imagawa Endgame

I should wait to consolidate my hold on the provinces I own, but I can't resist the opportunity to push straight into the Imagawa stronghold of Hizen while they're weak. It might not be the soundest strategy.

My whole army marches on Hizen.

The remainder of the Imagawa army, crushed, retreats into Nagasaki castle. There's no time to wait out the siege, and there's so few soldiers left to defend the castle that an assault couldn't possibly fail.

We capture Nagasaki. It's all over for the Imagawa.

Or is it?

Having left no troops in Chikuzen to subdue the populace, a rebellion has broken out.

Meanwhile, my campaigning left no troops in the south to repel a rebel invasion from Shikoku.

The rebel army crossed the sea from Iyo, captured the defenseless Bungo province, then moved straight on into Chikuga.

My daimyo and his forces are surrounded, cut off from my capital in Satsuma. The only troops I have elsewhere that could relieve them are in Nagato, on my border with the Mori (red) faction, who I'm reluctant to move. Will I be able to stamp out these rebel forces and consolidate my rule of the island? Or will my forces be defeated, and my strategy be plunged into chaos?